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Shoulder of Lamb a LA Maitre D' Hotel

A roasted lamb shoulder served with a cream and maitre d'hotel butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,230 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Roast the lamb

  1. Roast the shoulder of lamb until cooked to your liking.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the cream over medium heat until boiling.

  2. Add the maitre d'hotel butter to the boiling cream and stir until melted.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the roasted lamb and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lamb + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Cream + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,494 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Lamb + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together461 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lamb shoulder
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy as it roasts.
Cream
Forms the base of the sauce, adding richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Maitre d'hotel butter
Melts into the hot cream, adding fat and herb flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the butter to the boiling cream. Cream at a full boil can separate or thicken unevenly, so the butter may not emulsify smoothly. Stirring steadily while the butter melts helps it blend into a uniform, glossy sauce.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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